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Lit Hub Weekly

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Who should you ask about the best poems of 2024? Poets, of course. And their picks are all available to read online for free. | Lit Hub Criticism

“He has chosen to be a farm stand that serves salty, fatty, sugary pseudo-thinking.” These are the most scathing book reviews of 2024. | Book Marks

We know you don’t want to read every best books of 2024 list, so Emily Temple read them all for you. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

From the Booker to the Pulitzer, the Nebula to the Edgar, here are the award-winning novels of 2024. | Book Marks

26 full-length events include authors such as Rachel Kushner, Richard Powers, Anne Michaels, Dionne Brand, Nathan Thrall, Tanya Talaga, George McWhirter, and many more. Professionally recorded at the 2024 Vancouver Writers Fest, these videos are available until January 31.

“She was a contrarian yet utterly original, warm yet suffered no fools, wrote children’s books but could curse up a storm…” Kevin Young remembers Nikki Giovanni. | The New Yorker

“At every significant change in the medium, poets seemed to be the ones doing the first experiments. Poets were doing R&D.” Zoë Hitzig and Ryan Ruby in conversation. | The Baffler

Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili considers the “failure of both imagination and of historical evidence, to only center Haiti in crisis.” | Adi Magazine

“Through the barrier of a screen, the lines between the strange and the familiar blur: We come to know the endless suffering before us by heart, yet we have no real understanding of what it means to endure it.” On Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger. | The Nation

PocketMFA is an affordable graduate-level course and community that prepares writers for publishing their manuscripts. When you commit deeply to a cohort at PocketMFA, you discover your sustainable, professional, and lifelong journey as a working writer.

Joel Suarez considers Studs Terkel’s Working at fifty. | Jacobin

Ange Mlinko considers what we can learn from prose written by poets. | New York Review of Books

Kotryna Garanasvili considers the broad and underacknowledged world of “translation adjacent” activities. | Words Without Borders

Marisol LeBrón considers two books on the intersection of colonialism and prisons. | Public Books

Ayşegül Savaş discusses research, transitions, and the writing process. | Full Stop

Join Reedsy’s 101-day course and finish the first draft of your novel by spring. You’ll turbocharge your writing craft, master a new topic each week, and join a supportive community that will help you finally finish your novel. Enroll now for January 2025.

“It turns out that, upon reflection, the Almighty’s views are pretty straightforwardly those of the average North American conservative.” Yeah, Jordan Peterson’s views of the Bible are about what you’d expect. | Jacobin 

“A solitude of being one with others and just that—being, being so deeply inside oneself that there is no outside of oneself; there is no tension between you and the world.” Roger Reeves reflects on images of Black men resting. | Emergence Magazine

Troll-man-to-lover: When 17th century Swedish courts investigated supernatural love. | Atlas Obscura

In days of yore, the publishing holiday parties went hard. | The Cut

Maya Vinokour close-reads Luigi Mangione’s self-help library. | The Nation

Hannah Bonner considers literary motherhood and Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch. | Los Angeles Review of Books

Norton gifts complete your list. Whoever you are shopping for, Norton has books that will entertain, educate, and inspire.

Which literary stories made the biggest impact this year? • Palestinian stories and voices trace a long, painful year in Gaza • Gender, agency and freedom on both sides of the photographer’s lens • Just in time for those holiday family gatherings, here’s a less meta way to approach difficult conversations • Betsy Fagin talks to Peter Mishler • Read “Winter” and “Sigh,” two poems by Roberta Iannamico • These new books are out now • Jane Ciabattari in conversation with Weike Wang • Olivia Rutigliano recommends more of Dickens’s spooky Yuletide stories • Read “What Zarqaʾ al-Yamama Didn’t Say,” a poem by Mohamed Abdelbari • On the innovative work of iconic New Yorker cartoonist Saul Steinberg • Our editors’ favorite Lit Hub stories of 2024 • Are you the asshole if you “loathe” writers who are too online? • The most-read Lit Hub pieces of 2024 • Maris Kreizman on her favorite book to television adaptations of 2024 • Katherine J. Chen rediscovers Henry James • These are 50 of 2024’s best nonfiction books •  Our 10 favorite book to screen adaptations from 2024 • The case for recognizing the brain rot of times gone by • Chris Knapp talks to Andrew Martin about creating realistic relationships •  Abdelrahman ElGendy on